The HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) estimates that CMS made $4.6 million in incorrect Medicare outpatient payments to hospitals for established patients’ clinic visits in 2012. According to the OIG, hospitals attributed the incorrect payments to staff making clerical and programming errors, not verifying whether the patient was registered as an inpatient or outpatient of the hospital within the past 3 years (and thus considered an established rather than new patient), not following hospital procedures, not fully understanding Medicare billing requirements for clinic visits, and relying on the code that the treating physician billed for that visit. The OIG also observes that CMS does not have edits in place to identify Medicare payments for patients who were already registered at a facility. The OIG recommends that CMS work with its Medicare administrative contractors to recover identified incorrect payments and resolve additional potential overpayments to the extent feasible. For more information, see the full report, “CMS Did Not Always Correctly Make Clinic Visit Payments to Hospitals During Calendar Year 2012.”